being 3.
My final race of this trilogy was the leinster novice road race on the 3rd of May which was hosted by our club. I had run this last year, it was my first exposure to pure club running with no mass participation element, that day i finished 20th, running 22:05 for the 6k course and i was thrilled with it The two weeks between the national 10k and this had been filled with lightish mileage (low 40's)  steady and easy running - i only had one 5k pace session and that was a 6 X 3' w/ 90 second recovery on grass. I had never done a session on grass before...well not that type of session and it was bloody gruesome. I tried to hold my road 5k pace (3:25 per k) and i managed it for the first one and never got near it again, finishing with 5 splits around the 3:30 pace mark...I went home from that one dejected. On saturday, Eve got a bronze medal in the county championships u8 80m in a close fought and nailbiting race, whilst her elder brother finished 4th in his u10 80m. Monday the 3rd was notable for being son no.3's third birthday! So the whole family came down to watch me run and just spend some time just messing around - getting in the mood for scoffing birthday cake and the like. On a slightly more boring note the race went well for me. I ran ultra conservatively, actively putting on the brakes in the first kilometer and then picking up the pace from there. After the first k i was probably about 22nd - but managed to pick up about seven places during the race and finished 15th in a time of 20:48 and totally thrilled with an improvement of over a minute in a year.  20:48 last year would have seen me finish in the top 5, but this year the field was better. As a bonus i managed to place 3rd for the county and we picked up a bronze medal for that. full results here. http://www.athleticsleinster.com/ima...ults030510.pdf The plan now is to go back into a block of training, starting with more 5k / 10k work and then move onto a half marathon in september and finish the year with my A goal -  florence marathon at the end of november. In the meantime i have to go and get Jon a list of races between now and then that will help me on my way.